Thanks, Duam. Please enjoy! Don't hesitate to nitpick!
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THE FAIRY'S GAME
"It was a wonderful game, my dear, but I win."
Jennifer had fallen asleep last night whispering that sentence to her latest partner. She yawned and stretched luxuriously as she watched the sun peek over the horizon, far, far away. Judging by the light, it had been nearly eighteen hours since her last meal; her prey had long ago ceased fighting the inevitable. Even now, she could still feel his body somewhere in her intestines. She hauled herself into a sitting position and glanced down, noting that her stomach once again lay neat and flat - earlier it had been so swollen that anyone passerby would have thought that she was due for childbirth. She smiled and lovingly placed a palm over her belly, feeling its taut smoothness under her soft skin. Whistling a merry tune to herself, Jennifer crawled to the hole in the hollow tree that served as her home and thrust her head out to look. Satisfied that no one saw her, Jennifer stood up.
Or rather, she tried to stand up. The dead weight in her intestines reminded her that she had recently eaten and must purge herself of the body before she could move freely again. And though her stomach rested flatly on her waist, her prey's body had moved into her intestines and they bulged with the meal that they contained. She seized a nearby outcropping of bark and hauled herself upright, all three inches of her body. Normally she couldn't move at all after eating, but eighteen hours of steady work did wonders for mobility. Another smile flitted onto her cherry-red lips as she recalled memories of the past month. To think that she had completely tricked her prey into actually rehearsing how she would devour him! And not just once, but many, many times - so that when she did eat him, weeks of practice made the feeding process flawless. Realization struck him far too late, as it always did with her prey. He'd fought desperately against the digestion process, of course - indeed, in the course of the game she had trained him to do so and trained him well - and that only made consuming him all the more pleasurable.
Jennifer experimentally flitted her delicate, fairy wings and frowned. They were still damp and she knelt with her back to the hole in the tree where sunlight streamed through. She spread her wings wide and they glittered in brilliant shades and hues of blue and violet; she really did possess a beautiful pair of wings and her wingspan measured nearly five inches. Ten minutes later they felt dry and crisp enough to help support her weight and she lurched upright again. She frowned for a moment before she recalled the proper equations for the Unnatural Strength spell. Vitality rushed through her veins and she carried the weight in her intestines easily enough, but she nearly stumbled with her first step. She found that by leaning backwards slightly and opening her wings at a sharp angle behind her back, she could walk with a reasonable sense of balance despite the ungainly lump in her belly.
She first returned to the center of the tree stump where a pool of water lay perfectly still, filled wherever rain dripped down from a pin-sized hole in the ceiling of the spacious place she called her home. Even by the dim light of the morning, she concluded that she looked awful. Her fairy pride prevented her from showing so much as a lock of hair in such a state and she spent a good half hour making herself look presentable. When she'd finally finished kneading honey into her hair and then combing it out, it fell in glossy blonde cascades down to her waist and she practiced her most winsome smile in the reflection of the pool. She then chose a pair of slacks and a silk blouse that flattered her waistline and flaunted her slim, perfect figure while hiding the more unsightly bulge of her intestines. So dressed, Jennifer prepared for the day's activities.
But business first. Jennifer crept out of the dead tree trunk and cast the Invisibility and Scent Negation spells over herself before cautiously working her way down to the large pond that filled a sizable area of the park. Despite her magic, she was none too confident of her ability to fend off a chance marauding creature, especially when she could barely stand upright without casting a spell. Her particular tree stood about a hundred or so feet away from the pond; while a human could easily walk that distance, to Jennifer it translated to an hour's worth of stealthy movement before she found her favorite hideout on the very edge of the water. A cursory glance revealed that nothing had disturbed it since she last visited a month ago. Jennifer hid here for several more hours, watching the sun rise high into the sky and the full moon vanish around the curve of the earth. Finally her intestines finished their unpleasant task and her prey reappeared from the business end of the digestive tract.
She cast the Scent Negation spell before inspecting the horribly digested remnants of her prey. Post-mortem analysis, though morbid, still remained one of her favorite activities. All of his skin had melted away and most of his muscles along with it. The flesh around his head had been completely stripped from the bone, leaving a ghastly, eyeless skull with a terrified expression staring back mutely at her. The rest of his bones and a few hardy organs had survived the grueling trip through her body, but they were scattered throughout the stinking heap that had once been a man. None of his clothes except for the iron buckle of a belt had survived, and even the belt buckle had been digested beyond recognition. Jennifer measured her prey's vitality by the number of bones that were still connected to each other when her all-consuming intestines finished with him. Usually they looked like a fossilized collection that had come off the loser in a fight with a blender, though once she had been pleasantly surprised to find a man's skeletal structure almost completely intact. That alone had nearly made her regret choosing him as her gaming partner. Nearly.
The beautiful fairy smiled as she dumped the disgusting pile of filth into the pond. In the end, whatever their grand dreams, their abilities, or their ambitions, humans all looked the same after playing her game. However different they might have started out - and she knew just how different humans could be, since she often took the trouble of acquainting herself with each and every one - the game easily reduced all of them to a common denominator. The young fairy washed her hands in the pond water before she quietly slipped away. It was high noon when Jennifer took her station on her favorite lookout post atop a high beech tree.
After removing her spells, Jennifer gossiped pleasantly with a mother robin, all the while noting the human activity below. The park in which she lived was immense by her scale and provided the sole greenery available in an otherwise metropolitan city. Humans were present at any time of day, but they gathered in especially large droves between noon and nightfall. Jennifer's brilliant blue jewel-like eyes could tell a sparrow from a wren even a mile away and she had no trouble discerning the smallest details on the humans who walked through the park. She listened to the robin more than she talked, for her mind occupied itself with classifying the humans into categories of potential players for her game.
Above all, the human had to be young, healthy, and in possession of all his mental faculties, and it was no use looking for sick or decrepit prey. Like most fairies, Jennifer found the idea of harming children to be abhorrent, so they were automatically ruled out. Her hunting tactics also favored picking off lone animals who wandered from the herd, so she kept careful tabs on anyone who regularly visited the park alone. All of which, of course, narrowed the field of prey quite a bit. Granted, there were some times when she simply couldn't find a suitable human and had to improvise by randomly picking someone who might not be missed. As she watched, a young man and his sweetheart stopped in front of the pond. They exchanged a brief kiss before settling down and enjoying the scenery together.
Jennifer stifled a laugh, wondering how many of the couples she usually saw would still be around if they knew that the pond was really a graveyard, a silent witness to the many lives that her ghastly games had claimed. Men could be seduced, women befriended, either ensorcelled in an emergency. She kept careful records of everything she had done since arriving at this park five years ago and there certainly had occurred much worth remembering. Jennifer stayed for another hour atop the beech tree before she settled on how to make her next move. She bid the mother robin a polite farewell and descended into a thicket of trees that stood close to the park's center. Normally, few people wandered into this small forest - something about its gloom, she had heard. But a young, athletic-looking man stood peeping into the grove of trees without actually entering and Jennifer decided that she would choose him for this month. He certainly looked the type that she enjoyed toying with most - healthy, robust, confident, smart. She liked an intelligent opponent.
As a precaution, she cast the Invisibility spell over herself before using the Illumination spell. The result was that her skin took an ethereal azure glow - if you could see under the Invisibility mantle, that is. Normally no one could, but Jennifer attuned the spell to make one special exception for that man who stood peering into the darkness of the grove. The subsequent Sphere of Silence spell also applied to everyone except him. Unsurprisingly, when Jennifer slid from behind a tree some fifty feet distant, the human's head jerked in her direction and he stared at her, fascinated. Jennifer watched him carefully and decided to float a little closer - not too close to where he could distinguish her features, but close enough to pique his interest.
The last distraction that she needed was for him to call his friends. The Hypnotic Suggestion spell was one of the most complex and subtle of the ones she had yet mastered, but luckily she had prepared one in advance and she used it now to stir his interest. Simultaneously she suggested that he investigate alone - after all, he could just be seeing things, and wouldn't everyone laugh at him if the beautiful blue light turned out to be a mirage? Exactly as Jennifer predicted, he stepped towards her and she waited for a few moments before she turned and flitted deeper through the wood. She kept the distance as steadily as she could while she pretended to do something else; he must not suspect that she was leading him on. This game of cat-and-mouse continued for nearly half an hour, during which he sometimes thought of giving up the chase and she had to suggest that he shouldn't. Finally, Jennifer glided to rest on a large bell flower and hid herself in its depths. She curled up and carefully laid her wings against the flower petals, feigning sleep.
She heard his approach - humans always made a huge racket, whatever they did - long before he tentatively reached for the flower. Here lay the trickiest part of the entire scheme, the first contact between human and fairy. She had to lie in a flower somewhat below his eye level, so that he could peer into it without actually touching it. When he finally did touch it, which could sometimes take hours, she had to pretend to be startled but not intimidated; whatever happened, she couldn't fly away. It was the delicate part of convincing him that he had frightened her but that she wasn't truly scared - just startled a bit, that was all - that normally proved to be most difficult. Still, fascination with the fairy had snared more than one human before and Jennifer had this part down to nearly an art form. In the meantime, Jennifer cast an Invisibility Spell upon him; she still had bad memories of her first prospective victim, someone whom she had failed to snare because a random passerby had seen him talking to thin air.
After what seemed like half a day spent feigning sleep (though it was really just fifteen minutes), she felt a massive finger touch her body and she stirred. Then she yawned and stretched, aware of how closely he scrutinized her. She turned over in the flower petal and opened her eyes ... Jennifer shrieked in mock fright. Then she exhaled sharply and called up to him, projecting her voice so that he heard clearly, "Oh, I'm sorry. You startled me a bit." He stared at her open-mouthed with disbelief as she climbed out of the flower and balanced herself on the branch. Jennifer carefully folded her wings behind her back and called, "What's your name?"
He said nothing and continued staring. Jennifer repeated her question and he blinked before stammering out, "J-Jeremy. Jeremy Clay."
"Pleased to meet you, Jeremy." Jennifer curtsied elaborately upon the none too steady tree branch, projecting her voice as she did so. She tilted her head and looked up at him. "Haven't you ever seen a fairy before?"
"Well ... no," he murmured, still quite put off, and he stretched out a hand. Jennifer hopped onto his palm and seated herself on it as he slowly and carefully brought her closer to his face and studied her. He took in her long, luscious golden hair and fascinating blue and violet wings, her beautiful figure, her white, cream-smooth skin, her delicate features, her brilliant cerulean eyes so deep that he risked losing himself in them. She, for her part, assessed him also. Well-cut brown hair, brown eyes the color of chocolate, a clean-shaven, strong jaw, brown eyebrows, defined features, broad shoulders. His breath smelled of coffee, but she liked the firmness of his hand, his taut muscles, and the way his veins stood out under his skin - all signs of a clean, strong, healthy body. He wore shorts, a loose grass-green shirt, a headband of sorts, and a strange-looking device that humans called a watch upon his left wrist. She estimated that he couldn't be more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Jennifer decided that she liked Jeremy already.
"A-are you really a fairy?" he whispered at last.
She nodded. "Yes - the only one who lives here, I'm afraid. I'm an exile. What about you?" And slowly Jennifer gathered the vital information that she needed from Jeremy as the sun crawled across the sky. Jeremy seated himself against a tree and Jennifer learned that he was a single man, twenty-four years old, recently graduated from college and now in the city working a day job as a clerk. He liked to run in the park, which explained both his attire and his fitness. Normally he left work a few hours before dusk, but he explained that today was what he called a Sunday and therefore he had the day to himself. She listened carefully, but when he stood up an hour later she was quite satisfied that he had few connections and therefore would not be missed. She told him to put her down by the flower.
"If you want to see me again," Jennifer called, "come by tomorrow - alone, mind you - and I will wait for you, Jeremy, by the dead oak tree near the pond. You needn't worry, I will shield us from prying eyes with magic. But," she added, "one word of this to anyone and it's over. You won't see so much as a flicker of blue from me again." This was untrue, of course, but Jennifer decided that Jeremy did not need to know that until he awoke trapped in her stomach. They exchanged cordial farewells and Jennifer watched Jeremy stride off through the gloomy forest, making enough noise for a troop of fairies. She lifted her spells and smiled to herself as he receded in the distance. Her stomach growled and rumbled ominously; smiling, she laid a hand on her belly and whispered, "Soon. I've found you a new playmate."
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As usual, Jennifer awoke at dawn the next day. She paused only to greet the sun before she pulled out a heavy tome of spells and set it down in the light, first reinforcing the Invisibility spell around the interior of the dead oak before she set to her studies. Like any good hunter, she invariably kept the skills and tools of her trade well-honed and in top condition. She reviewed the Invisibility, Silence, and Scent Negation spells among a score of others, then turned to the back of the book where an extra appendix lay. Here were contained the spells used by fairy Inquisitors, but amongst the hundreds of equations Jennifer only bothered with a few. The Waterproof spell was the most important to her, but she also paid particular attention to the Self-Sufficiency spell - once she had blundered in casting it, which had ruined her games for more than a week. Jennifer next turned to the survival section, where the Regeneration, Indigestible, Undeformable, and Impenetrable spells were located. These she reviewed before tackling the last and most difficult section, mind spells. Most of the equations written here were sinfully complex and could not be explicitly solved except given highly specific conditions; usually the spell caster had to resort to rough approximations such as the Hypnotic Suggestion spell, whose reliability were sketchy at best.
Jennifer carefully closed the book and replaced it upon her bookshelf when she finished. In spite of its age, a steady stream of Preservation spells kept it as spotless as when it had first been scribed, some six or seven centuries ago. The spell book proper only occupied half of the tome; the other half included appendices of other spells that had been derived in later times, as well as notes by the previous owners of the book. Jennifer herself had once worked out a complicated sequence of Regeneration spells, which she heard had been incorporated into standard fairy medicinal curriculum. It mattered little to her - she was a fairy outcast and used the spells only to amuse herself.
Exercise called next; Jennifer proceeded through her daily routine of a hundred fifty sit-ups and a hundred stomach crunches. She then spent the next few hours gossiping amongst the animals of the park. Not all animals were friendly, of course, but she knew which ones to avoid. A few hours after noon, she returned to her oak tree and began preparing herself for the inevitable meeting. Jennifer washed her hair in an equal parts solution of honey, sulfur, and black alum, a formula she had learned from one of her former prey. It was a mess to prepare even with the best spell work but guaranteed a sheen of gold in her hair that, had she still resided further west, would have made her the envy of all fairy society. She bathed in another solution of milk and aloes that made her skin soft as a dove's breast. After she finished and dried herself with a rapid series of spells, she applied makeup to her face. She donned her best dress, which had been made out of silver thread with gem fibers interwoven throughout the fabric; it shone with all the colors of the rainbow and sparkled whenever she made the least movement. Thus equipped, the huntress knelt at the entrance of her home and awaited her quarry.
Huntress. Quarry. Jennifer smiled at the irony of it: she sometimes played cat-and-mouse games with a human, but she invariably had the role of the mouse. Naturally, the human lulled him or herself into a false sense of security when really Jennifer was not the prey but the predator. After all, how could this waifish-looking fairy with such a delicate body be the huntress? Jennifer chuckled as she thought back to the past; some of these humans she had even warned explicitly. In the end, they all became a part of her. She lovingly stroked her breast, idly wondering how many humans had been sacrificed to provide her with her seductive bosom.
But Jennifer was no conceited fairy concerned only with her appearance; otherwise she would long ago have found herself in a zoo, to be admired by all men and to arouse jealousy in all women. Instead, her unearthly beauty served only as a means to her end. It was the thrill of the hunt and the excitement of playing the game that she truly enjoyed, the tension of matching her wits against a human's. True, they played by her rules, but Jennifer had no illusions about her safety. Even a ten year old girl could easily crush her fragile fairy body with one firm squeeze before Jennifer could prepare a suitable spell. Had any of her prospective victims known about her true intentions, she probably would have died long ago.
But just then Jennifer caught sight of Jeremy and put the thoughts from her mind. Whereas she had prepared her looks with the meticulous care of a surgeon, he dressed quite casually in running pants and a T-shirt. He stopped practically right under her and looked around anxiously; when Jennifer was certain that no one else was looking, she cast Invisibility and Silence spells over him before lifting her own. He saw her in a flash; she waved happily and he reached out with his right hand. He grasped her slender body quite gently with his thumb and index finger, tilting his other three fingers so that she could sit on them. Jennifer giggled and snuggled against the warm flesh; sometimes the men handled her so roughly that she would have been crushed, but she always took the precaution of casting the Undeformable spell first. Not Jeremy, though; he knew his strength and she found herself ever more pleased with him.
First Jennifer assured Jeremy that her spells made them undetectable, then she asked him to put her back into the tree. This he did, handling her as carefully as if she were made of spider web. She then cast the fairly complicated Transmutate spell upon him - and just like that, he was standing beside her, only half a head taller than she, blinking and bewildered by the abrupt transformation. Jennifer giggled and seized his hand, leading him into the hole of the tree. "Welcome to my home, Jeremy! Please, make yourself comfortable. Would you like tea, or do you drink only water?"
"Ah, just water is fine." He glanced around the insides of the tree as she poured water into a hollowed acorn shell. From the outside, the trunk of the tree measured a little more than two feet in diameter, but from the inside it looked immense. The hollow out trunk towered above him, ending in a sloped wooden dome through which only a pinprick of light showed at the very apex of the wood. Photoluminescent lichen providing a steady source of soft, white light throughout the interior of the cozy establishment even in the dead of night. And cozy indeed it was: shelves and beds were carved out of the sides of the walls, the latter lined with swan down and heather. A type of moss served as a soft, thick carpet. The hollowed out center of the room had been dug into a shallow well where rainwater collected, functioning as a mirror and a bath. A writing desk lay across the room and a few leaves with white undersides had been pinned to the interior of the bark with discarded porcupine quills; curious, Jeremy stood up and walked to largest of the posts. "What do these words say?" he asked.
Jennifer, holding an acorn shell filled with water in both hands, nearly dropped the cup in shock before she remembered that he could not understand the words. Come to think of it, it wasn't the first time she'd had the question. She handed the acorn to him. "These are the rules of a game," she explained. "It's something that I play with the pigeons around the city. I won't bore you with the details." That it was a posting of game rules was true, but that it was a game she played with pigeons an outright lie. Originally she had posted the guidelines with men in mind, though a few women had also played the fairy's game. Jeremy nodded in understanding and Jennifer smiled up at him as he drank.
Had he been able to understand the fairy runes, this is what they would have told him:
RULES OF THE GAME
1. I must not tell him about the game.
2. If I lose the game, I may not see him again. If I win, I may do as I wish with him.
3. I may influence him but not interfere explicitly with his free will.
4. If at any time he wishes to leave me, I may not prevent him.
5. I may not force him to enter my mouth, stomach, or any part of my body against his will.
6. I may not hold him within my mouth, stomach, or any part of my body against his will.
7. I must give him fair and adequate hints and warnings of my intentions.
8. I win only if he is completely within my stomach when the light of the full moon shines upon me.
9. Violation of any of these rules is automatic forfeiture.
10. When the full moon sets, one game ends. If I have not won by then, he wins by default.
11. When the full moon sets, another game begins with a different man.
Even upon the first reading, anyone could tell that the rules were heavily biased against the fairy. A discerning reader might also have judged the true purpose of the game, although it was not explicitly stated - the victim had to offer his or her body as a meal to the fairy. In a normal situation, this would have been ridiculous. It was a game of Jennifer's own devising and even she admitted that she had built the rules to provide herself with a challenge - later adding rules three, four, and seven after she decided that the first version provided a few loopholes for her. Earlier there had been another rule two - "He must not tell anyone about me. If he does, I win" - but she had erased it on the grounds that it defeated the prospect of winning the game the proper way. She considered eliminating the word "not" from rule one but decided that she wasn't quite ready for that level of difficulty yet. Jennifer took pride in the fact that she had not lost a single game in five years.
They chattered amiably for two or three hours before she served dinner to him. It was a simple affair, really - honeyed bread and a raspberry tart, but as he ate Jeremy declared, "I've never, ever tasted any food this good. Aren't you going to join me, Jennifer?"
She shook her head, carefully phrasing her words so as to both speak no mistruth as well as provide Jeremy with the first of her hints. "No. I only eat once a month, on the night of the full moon. It's my custom. Otherwise I keep myself alive with spells."
"More's the pity, this is excellent," Jeremy declaimed between gulps. "Do all fairies do this?"
Jennifer folded her legs under her body, giving every impression of a beautiful and elegant lady. The last thing she wanted was for him to feel intimidated, however, and she spoke to him like an old friend. Cultivating trust was an important step in winning the game. "No. Most fairies eat as humans do, Jeremy: twice or three times a day. I'm peculiar in this regard. Most fairies do not eat any meats unless all other food sources have been exhausted. And we try not to eat too much. Our wings can't handle the extra weight."
"Can you fly?" he asked.
She laughed and shook her head ruefully. "No, I'm afraid not. Fairy wings aren't built for flight, Jeremy. But we do glide very well."
The last of the honeyed shortbread disappeared from his plate. They talked more and Jennifer carefully structured her conversation to create an illusion of intimacy between herself and Jeremy. She told the story of how she had once tried to sleep in a carnivorous plant, not realizing what it was until the last moment. She laughed as he told her of a time when he had fallen asleep into a plate of spaghetti. She learned more about him and in turn told him more about herself and fairies in general. She knew much of humans from her previous encounters, but still listened attentively as he discussed the world at large. Much of it fascinated her, especially how humans had adapted using engineering to accomplish what they lacked in magic. Knowing what she did of magic, Jennifer found she agreed with Jeremy's statement that engineering was much more reliable than magic.
They talked until the moon rose, after which she bid him a fond farewell. She again reiterated that he must not speak a word of her to anyone, lest the knowledge of her existence (and fairies in general) became public. She undid the Transmutation spell before vanishing back into her home with a slightly seductive flair. Jennifer smiled to herself as she extricated herself from the tight dress and donned a silk nightgown. The day's meeting had been wonderfully spent. It was not quite midnight and she felt very weary, but Jennifer made herself perform her regular exercise of a hundred fifty sit-ups and a hundred crunches before she bathed. Bathing, in her opinion, constituted the only proper way to finish a day - one washed one's body clean ere sleep overtook reality. When she finished, she dried herself with a few Waterproof spells before sinking into bed, tired but satisfied.
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Jennifer's next significant move towards winning the game occurred five days later when she and Jeremy discussed history. They sat at the edge of the pond where Jennifer washed away the results of her games, visible and audible only to each other. Jeremy sat with his back against an elm tree, his eyes on the school of geese that floated on the pool's surface; Jennifer seated herself on his shoulder. Earlier she had explained that she would like to take on human size, but the Transmutate spell did not work both ways. It could only shrink a man - "It can make you so small that I could eat you," she had said - or restore him to normal size, but could not enlarge him. He had sighed in disappointment while she feigned sympathy. She now listened attentively as he discoursed about the great wars of human history - Canaan, Gaugamela, Carthage, Mecca, Vienna, Agincourt, Tokyo, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Verdun, Minsk, Normandy. He traced the evolution of weaponry and tactics, the development of armies and nations, but when he had finished Jennifer asked, "Do you know anything about the fairy wars?"
"Fairy wars?" he asked, taken aback. "I can't say that I do. What were those about?"
Jennifer threw her hands up in a gesture of despair. "Nobody remembers what they were about except the fairy historians. Humans fought against fairies and against each other, a long time ago close to where we are right now. The humans don't remember them anymore - none of the humans and few of the fairies survived that war." It was a story that Jennifer had invented and blatantly untrue, but Jeremy obviously did not know that. She was well practiced and quite skilled in the deception necessary to introduce the object of the game. "But in fairy history, that war is known as the Unspeakable War. Both sides committed great atrocities that the fairies would rather forget - fairy Inquisitors, in particular, mastered the science of torture for extracting information." She shuddered and he laid a comforting hand across her body which she snuggled into. "The war lasted many years; the fairy magic arts, which were already highly developed, grew in leaps and bounds. Humans captured fairies and fed them to their pets. The fairies did the same - they captured humans and left them at the mercy of the Inquisitors."
"How so?" Jeremy asked, interest plain in his voice.
Jennifer spun her story out. "The fairies used shrinking and binding spells to capture humans. But it was under the Inquisitors that humanity suffered the most. The Inquisitors would - do you know what they did, Jeremy? We still have detailed records left by the historians of that time. The Inquisitors would shrink a man down and cast the Self-Sufficiency and Indigestible spells, both of which were developed at that time, upon their victim. Then the Inquisitor swallowed the man! And the Inquisitors had their own spells cast on themselves to prevent the human from escaping. Can you imagine, burning a man alive in your belly and yet casting spells on him so that he would suffer without dying? The mere threat of it usually got the Inquisitors the information they wanted, and they developed the Expose spell at that time, too, so they knew when a person was lying. Even the hardest of men broke after a few hours spent within a fairy Inquisitor.
"But that wasn't all. All prisoners given over to the Inquisitors were dealt with the same way after interrogation finished - all of them swallowed alive. And if just a few hours of that treatment could destroy a man's will - did you know, the fairies kept their prisoners for years? Even after the plot was exposed, all the humans rescued had long gone insane from the torture. The Order of the Question was disbanded and the Inquisitors banished, but it didn't stop there - they continued the war on their own, stopping only when the last remnants of humanity were wiped out, and a second fairy war began that time which pitted the greater fairy society against the Inquisitors, ending only when all the renegades had been accounted for and executed. Those were evil days, long long ago."
Jeremy shivered in spite of himself. "Sounds horrible, to be tortured like that."
Jennifer nodded. "It is, Jeremy. I've spent my fair share of time either being eaten by an animal or escaping from one's stomach." That, at least, was no lie, even if her story about the fairy wars had been.
"You have?" a startled Jeremy asked. "But I thought you were a powerful magician."
She pressed herself deeper into his hand. "Magic isn't infallible. It was developed in the first place as a way to protect fairies from our predators, nearly all of which are much larger and stronger than we. Even so, there have been many times when I've awoke to find myself inside of a creature's mouth or worse yet its stomach. All fairies learn escape and wilderness survival as part of general education, but the sciences are still inexact at best." She turned what she hoped was her most winsome smile up at him. "Would you like to experience it for yourself?"
"No thanks, I'll read about it in a book," he answered. They did not mention the subject again that day or for the next few days to come, but she took the opportunity to implant the suggestion in his mind where, with a little nurturing, she was certain that great results would be produced.
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Jeremy first entered Jennifer's stomach when he lost a game of chess to her. He taught her how to play, or at least he thought he did; she had actually learned human chess a long time ago before coming to the park. She threw her first few games to him with good grace, but today, with fifteen days until the night of the full moon, she had decided to take the initiative. Getting the quarry into her stomach for the first time always proved to be the trickiest part. Once that had been accomplished, her victory was almost inevitable. This was one of her favorite aspects of the game, coaxing her partner into her body for the very first visit. The first time usually proved the most exciting of them all except for the final entry - the first time a man or a woman entered her body, she had no previous idea of how her gaming partner would react. Jennifer's terms with Jeremy were simple: if she won, she would swallow him and let him know how it felt to be within a creature's stomach. If he won, she would give him a kiss - she'd given him another warning when she referred to her lips as the gates to eternity. They played in her home using a makeshift board and pebbles with pictures roughly scratched upon them.
She won the game quite narrowly, coming down to an endgame which pitted her king and a rook against his king and a trio of pawns. He conceded, but his face clearly betrayed his nervousness and she tried to calm him. At her insistence, he washed himself thoroughly. "It isn't all that scary, Jeremy. I've done it myself several times - if I'm caught in a blizzard and need a shelter, I'll cast all the spells necessary to protect myself and then feed myself to a bear or a fox. It's all excellent way of outlasting a storm. Don't worry, you'll be well-protected. Some fairies like it so much that they actively seek out creatures who will swallow them."
He gulped mutely and she giggled as she shrank him down until he fit comfortably in her hand, no taller than her smallest finger. "Listen carefully, Jeremy. You won't need to do anything, but the moment you want to leave, talk to me and I'll let you out. I won't cast Sphere of Silence the way the Inquisitors used to, so we'll be able to talk to each other. I'll cast the Indigestible spell on you, for obvious reasons, and the Self-Sufficiency spell, which eliminates your body's need for air, water, or food. The Waterproof spell will keep all of my stomach's contents off your body and the Tranquility spell will keep my stomach relaxed so that it doesn't crush you. Oh yes, and the Scent Negation spell - it really does stink down inside a fairy's body. I'll cast the Impenetrable and Undeformable spells on myself so that I don't accidentally burst. I'll also cast the Placeholder spell, which will confine you to my stomach. We wouldn't want to accidentally lose you into my intestines or crawling up my throat. You'll be nice and comfortable. Trust me." She smiled her most reassuring smile at him. Jeremy muttered something inaudible and she bent closer to listen, her hair falling all around him like a golden curtain. "Hmm? What did you say?"
"I said, you sound like you're enjoying this too much."
"Believe me, you're the one who's going to have all the fun," she lied. "Remember, don't panic. It's quite pleasurable; some fairies are hopelessly addicted to it." He might have refused to go in at all, promise or no, had he known what was waiting for him: an Epicurean spell lay in the uncharted depths of her belly, a spell designed to deaden pain while magnifying pleasure a hundred times. Also, a Cultivate spell had been strategically positioned within her stomach, a complex and subtle magic used to accentuate the pleasures of an experience and render them addictive. Between the two of them, she expected him to within minutes become as ensnared as a man who has used drugs his entire life, only that this was a deeper, more primal urge that she created. She smiled again; of all her inventions, Jennifer felt that the game really was her best. It was certainly the one she enjoyed the most. She had calculated that she could persuade him into her stomach today anyways and had dressed to match. She wore a plainly colored two-piece bathing suit with an ankle-length skirt and a vest over her chest. This left her stomach completely unclothed, which would be necessary given how much she expected it to stretch.
"Fine. Let's get this over with." He shut his eyes tightly.
She laughed softly and not unkindly as she raised him to her mouth. Her cherry-bright lips opened wide, her breath smelling faintly of honey and scented almonds, before she gently tilted him into her mouth. She took care not to hit his body against her teeth. She closed her jaws and opened her throat, feeling his warm, smooth body with her tongue, enjoying his strong masculine taste. (She'd gagged the first time she tried to swallow an unwashed man, which had proven quite embarrassing for both of them.) Unbeknownst to him, she had also prepared the Frictionless spell and he slipped down her long throat without a sound. He landed into her stomach with a plop and a muffled yelp. Before he had quite recovered, however, she laid herself down on the ground with her back resting on the floor. Then she loosened the Transmutate spell, just a little. From her stomach she heard a yelp of surprise as he began to grow. Her stomach stretched and bulged as he expanded in size, but it did not burst - indeed, even if he had been his normal human size, the combination of the Undeformable and Impenetrable spells would have held him securely. However, she had no interest in letting him grow large enough to tear her house apart. Her stomach ballooned outward as though she had carried a child for two years instead of a mere nine months, but then it stopped and she patted it fondly. Just the right size - enough to keep her pinned down but not enough to crush her, enough to put up spirited resistance but not enough to cause her any discomfort. "How are you feeling, dear Jeremy?"
"It's tight in here!" a muffled voice cried. "I'm squashed like a coin going through the mint!"
She chuckled; she could feel his movements through her body and even through the hands which she had placed atop her belly. He hadn't panicked, but she sensed that he held onto his calm only by the thinnest of threads. Before he could demand to be let out, she softly crooned a soothing song in the fairy language. The uncomfortable movement in her body died somewhat and she spoke to her distended belly. "It'll become better, Jeremy. The stomach adjusts to its contents and it may feel tight at the moment but you'd be surprised at how quickly it becomes comfortable. Relax and breathe, Jeremy. That's right, relax. The stomach walls are smooth and soft, perfect cushions for your body. Listen to the sounds of my body. Can you hear my heart, Jeremy, as it beats? Use it to calm yourself; everything is tranquil inside and as long as my spells are active you are within the safest, most secure fortress in the world. Nothing can harm you while you're within me. Stay calm." She hummed a few more stanzas of the song as her stomach laboriously shifted to accommodate its new contents. He had stopped fighting so hard and in another few minutes he stopped struggling at all. She rocked back and forth from left to right as well as she could. The weight of his body inside of her hung as though she'd swallowed a boulder, but Jennifer closed her eyes in contentment. Half the fun of the game lay in the physical pleasure of a living human inside of your body; the other half came from how they practically begged to jump down your throat by the end. Using Hypnotic Suggestion and Cultivate, Jennifer began working the idea into Jeremy's subconscious mind that it really was comfortable within her stomach - perhaps even pleasurable, once he became adjusted to it. She gently rubbed her massive belly with her hands and felt more tension draining out of his body. "It's comfortable inside, isn't it? You can get used to this feeling, can't you?"
Much to her disappointment, he asked to be let out five minutes later and she had to hold back a sigh of regret. Nearly all of the other gamers stayed longer, sometimes much longer, on their first sojourn into her pitch-black depths. It was due to the Waterproof and Indigestible spells, of course, without which they'd be screaming in agony. But the trio of spells that enabled a human to survive down there made the experience far more comfortable. Jennifer smiled even as Jeremy shrank within her belly and it deflated down to the flatness which formed part of her perfect body. She hadn't shown him the true pleasure of being held down, not yet - he'd only caught a glimpse of it as her stomach adjusted to his body and he would not have denied that the experience had been a pleasant one. When he had shrunk to the size that could comfortably slip through her throat, she forced him through and into her mouth where she very gently lowered him into her soft right hand. Briefly she considered letting him exit her body through the other passage - but no, that came only if she won the game. Aloud, she asked, "How was it?"
"Different, that's for sure ... but Jennifer, let's not do that again." He wasn't even wet. Jennifer giggled as she removed her spells from him and restored him to roughly her height.
"If you wish, Jeremy." They talked more and he did not broach the subject again for the remainder of the day, but she knew that she had him hooked. She knew it by the way he talked and looked at her, by the way his eyes strayed to her beautiful waist. By the time he said goodbye, well after dusk, Jennifer knew that she was winning the game.
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Two days passed before the combination of his memory, his curiosity, and the subtle influence of Cultivate and Hypnotic Suggestion caused him to say yes when she asked if he wished to relive the experience. This time he remained within her for an entire hour, experimentally moving in her tight stomach and listening as she hummed songs to him. She rubbed her belly gently and softly; Jeremy felt more comfortable than he had ever felt in his entire life lying within Jennifer's stomach. To amuse him, she drank water until her stomach had filled up with liquid. That was a memorable experience, but it paled in comparison to the next day when she brought her mighty stomach muscles to bear for the first time. Her daily routine of exercise had developed unnaturally powerful abdominal muscles and now she used them as Jeremy lay curled within her body. When she first squeezed, ecstasy pulsed through both of their bodies and he felt as though he would scream with pleasure. She continued pressing her muscles, sometimes gently, sometimes violently, always unexpectedly until after an hour she lay exhausted upon the mossy floor of her home. Then she cast the Invigorate spell upon herself and continued. That day and the next few days Jeremy stayed within her stomach for hours at a time until the moon rose. She discarded her evening exercises and collapsed into bed after bathing, sometimes asleep the moment her head touched the pillows. In the mornings when he wasn't around, she noted that she had so far played strictly by the rules. She looked forward to the conclusion of the game.
Jennifer began "training" Jeremy for the end of the game one week before the full moon. In the period leading up to that time, he had begun to call her "buttercup;" she simply referred to him as "love." As she promised, he had become entirely addicted to the physical pleasure of being in her stomach, but she intended to take it one step further still. That afternoon, following the spells and rituals that had become quite familiar to both of them, he snuggled into her stomach and pushed experimentally on the walls of his confining prison. She smiled as she laid her hands over her massive belly. It was really quite pathetic how her prey usually begged to be eaten on the night that the game ended. When she felt that he had settled down quite comfortably, she relaxed the Tranquility spell. Not too much, just a little. The effects were not immediately obvious, of course, but after a few minutes her stomach squeezed - not the gentle caresses of her voluntary muscles, but the suffocating grip of a movement designed to crush him. He yelped and a muffled voice sounded through her flesh. "What are you doing, buttercup?"
"It's a game I thought might amuse you, love," she whispered. "Have you ever given a thought to the fact that you are within a stomach? Not a womb, love, where absolutely nothing can injure you. But in a stomach, whose purpose is to ... process ... the food. And in this case, love, you are the food!"
"This isn't funny," he cried as he squirmed violently. She choked back a cry of pleasure at his futile struggle. Truth be told, once a man was down in her stomach he could never escape again except at her whim. But she enjoyed playing with her quarry and lulling them into a false sense of confidence: it made the endgame all the more enjoyable, hence her training. "Make it stop!"
"Ohh, that tickles. This game is called 'Two Ways Out,'" she whispered conspiratorially. "You are securely held in my stomach, love, and your body is being prepared for the intestines. If you fall into them, you will never see moonlight again. But there is another way out, though it is not easy. You may also leave the way you came, and that is the essence of the game - you must fight your way up to the throat and escape the terrors of digestion. It is not easy, but try your best. No harm will come to you, love - I'll keep the Waterproof spell at full power."
Just then her stomach constricted with much ferocity and she felt him inexorably sliding further down. He yelped again, but she soothed him and gave him extra advice. To her gratification and pleasure, he fought spiritedly and she playfully began to wrestle with him. "Less energy, more technique, love. If you keep squirming like that, you'll just tire yourself out. Concentrate on holding your ground. My stomach is far stronger than you, love, but you can win if you can stand firm. Then work your way up until you find the next stable area, rest, and continue. Good luck, love." Part of it was a lie, of course - as hopelessly outmatched in strength as they were, none of her prey had the slightest chance of escaping on their own - but the false hope that she dangled in front of them did create an exciting game as they struggled against her powerful stomach muscles. His squirming, now less forceful but more determined, sent waves of unholy pleasure rippling outward from her stomach and she had to restrain herself from making any noise.
But as with most prey playing the game for the first time, he could not even hold his own position against the inexorable power of her stomach. From the outside, Jennifer was a waif of a fairy, with such a delicate appearance that it seemed a strong gust of wind could break her; from the inside, she was a force of nature. No one ever seemed to realize this fact before the night of the full moon, however. He gradually slipped lower and lower in spite of his best efforts and at the end of twenty minutes he lay physically exhausted at the bottom of her stomach, going no further solely due to the Placeholder spell. She wiggled her stomach with pleasure; few of her gaming partners lasted this long. Even the army sergeant who easily benched three hundred pounds of iron had been incapable of resistance after a mere half hour in her dark and watery depths.
She knew that he enjoyed the struggle almost as much as she did, for his complaints had stopped after a short while. She reinforced the Cultivate spell before casting the Invigorate spell upon him. When he again began to squirm in her stomach, she also squirmed, but with sensory pleasure. Occasionally she helped him through a particularly difficult stretch of the stomach with a tightening of her abdominal muscles, but she made him work for every centimeter of progress. When he had at last forced his way back to his starting position, she recast the Cultivate and Invigorate spells. Even from her distant vantage point, she could feel that he was beginning to enjoy their playful wrestling every bit as much as she did. "Who's the cat and who's the poor little mouse this time, love?" she murmured seductively. "Do you like it down there?"
"Very much, buttercup," he answered as he stretched. Her stomach expanded slightly before resuming its duties and he once again began to slowly, agonizingly and sensationally slowly, work his way through her belly. She smiled wickedly as she added power to the Cultivate spell and from deep inside of her he moaned with pleasure. Ah, the ironies of the game; she could even convince her prey that digestion was a euphoric process for the digested, when in reality nothing could be further from the truth. But "love" needn't know that until the night of the full moon. She played with him for another half hour until he asked her to stop. This she did, restoring the Tranquility spell to its full power. Her stomach relaxed and so did he; they made conversation to each other for a few more hours, his body a massive weight in hers. When he finally emerged from her mouth, his first remark was that he had more fun that night than he had in many years. "You'd be rich in no time if you charged for the experience, buttercup," he told her. She only smiled secretively and leaned her head against his shoulder.
The next few nights she continued to train him in the sport of stomach wrestling. She knew that the addiction was setting in when he began to take his clothes off before entering her body; the sensation of muscle on skin usually proved a highly intoxicating one, and he wished to expose as much of his skin as possible. Naturally she played her part as the fairy who was all too pleased to oblige. His strength and stamina increased and they both enjoyed the activities more with each passing day, until by the end of the week she and he held a marathon match of over eight hours. He nearly reached her esophagus several times and each time she skillfully tempted him before a violent surge of her muscles sent him tumbling back into the depths of her belly. Once he slept the night away in her stomach, in the softest, most comfortable, and most accommodating bed he had ever laid his body; when he finally awoke, it was after a better sleep than he had in years and he wondered if he had ever felt so relaxed or refreshed in his life. He might have thought the experience far less enjoyable if he could have seen her expression; she smiled as she contemplated the night of the full moon, when his training would end and the real competition begin.
With his life as the grand prize and no second place awards.
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As usual, Jennifer rose at dawn and greeted the sun. Today was the big day, the day when the full moon rose at twilight and one game ended. After the usual morning exercises, Jennifer took extra care with her appearance, washing herself twice and spending nearly two hours perfecting the look of her hair and skin. She applied her makeup with the greatest care and once again selected her most dazzling dress, the one woven of silver and gems. It was a gift worthy of a king's ransom and she spent another half hour fitting it to her tastes. She tied it with a skein of golden thread, emphasizing her slender waist and seductive figure. Finally she finished by applying a special perfume of flowers to her skin; it was laced with powerful pheromones that would make her wishes nearly irresistible to any man. Then she emptied out the rain water at the center of her home; the caterpillars and pigeons both agreed earlier that it would rain today and she saw no evidence to the contrary. Besides which, inclement weather had never stopped any of her gaming partners from appearing for the endgame.
She reviewed her spells with painstaking precision. By the time she was completely satisfied with her preparations, the sun had passed noon and she fluttered off to make the rounds, collecting news from the various creatures in the park. From a scrap of newspaper that a robin had used to build her nest, the fairy read a story on whether the park she inhabited was haunted or not. The story noted that someone vanished in the park every month for the past five years, usually a young man or woman, and always on the night of the full moon. Some of the theories that the writer advanced included alien abduction, occult kidnappings, gang grudges, and even more bizarre speculation. Whoever had penned the column urged his readership to avoid the park, or else to travel only in lit areas with large groups. Jennifer wondered what the writer would have said had he known that all the bodies could be found at the bottom of the park pond. She gossiped some more before leaving for the next stop. In this idyllic way she spent the rainy afternoon conversing with her friends until she spied Jeremy walking into the park in the downpour. He looked a little too pleased with himself and she smiled as she imagined how the night would unfold. She hastened back to her home in order to reapply her pheromone-laced perfume. Her stomach rumbled impatiently and she giggled as she wrapped her arms around her beautiful belly, whispering sweet promises to the organ that had become a graveyard for over half a hundred humans. "Soon, my precious stomach. I cherish you above all other parts of my body and I will not neglect you. Soon, I will unbind you from my magic and then you may play with my love for one last time. Be patient until then."
It was a few hours before dusk when she shrank him and invited him into her home again. They played a most agreeable game of chess (Jennifer lost) and made idle conversation until dinner, when she served him apple pie and nutmeg tea. When he asked if she would join him, she answered, "Love, I intend to have you for dinner tonight." He took that to mean that she dodged the question and she felt it unnecessary to correct the perception. When he had finished, they strolled to the edge of the oak trunk and watched the rain until it died down. The clouds broke and the landscape lay painted with wonderful hues of gold and scarlet as the sun sank into the horizon. He asked her, shyly at first, if she would care to resume their wrestling game. She consented with good grace.
After she cast the necessary spells and he stripped off all his clothes, she opened her rose-red lips and gently tilted him into it. He slid down her throat without a word and she sighed in contentment. Then, as he landed in her stomach, she rose from her position and quietly walked to the pool of water. The day's rain had nearly filled it to the brim; the fairy undressed herself and slid into the pool, her wings and skin glistening by the soft light of the lichen. She immersed her body in the water, carefully laying herself nearly flat on its gently curved wall, before releasing the Transmutate spell. Again he expanded to fill her entire stomach. Jennifer's eyes traced the fiery arc of the sun vanishing in the distance as the heavy weight of his body filled her own. Her stomach bulged and broke through the surface of the rain water; she could not move without a spell to aid her. He began wiggling but she softly crooned, "Wait, love. Let's do something different tonight. I've never loosed the Tranquility spell more than a little ... but tonight, if you want, I'd like to release it entirely. Would that please you?"
"Very much, buttercup," he answered in a muffled voice from within the darkness of her stomach.
"Be careful, love," she teased. "You'll find that you've never quite struggled against anything as strong as my unrestrained belly. Are you sure you want to play this game?"
"Definitely. Bring it on, buttercup!"
She smiled as she savored his competitive air; her less courageous partners sometimes feared the unknown and would lay still in her stomach for hours until the full moon sealed their fates. This should turn out to be a most interesting night indeed. She undid the Tranquility spell and set it aside - after tonight, she shouldn't need to use it again for some time - and her stomach instantly responded, squeezing with a hitherto unknown ferocity. He gasped and struggled; she leaned in slightly to her massive belly and softly crooned, "Any time you want to stop, love, just say so." But after a second or two it became very obvious that he did not wish to stop and there he and she wrestled as they had never wrestled before. Even after an Invigorate spell, however, it became obvious that his trapped body was no match for her almighty stomach muscles. They wrapped lusciously around his body, squeezing him none too gently but without injuring him. She sighed in pleasure as the sun vanished in the distance. Soon dusk would darken to night and then the real fun would begin.
Jeremy continued to squirm and struggle as her powerful muscles inexorably moved him to her intestines. In spite of all her training, he could make no headway against his imminent doom and she found herself casting the Invigorate spell more often than she had ever done in a night. The churning digestive juices covered nearly his entire body as her stomach secreted more of it in anticipation of preparing her meal for the next stage in its journey. She felt the first hint of fatigue in her belly muscles more than an hour later, long after the sun had vanished and the first stars appeared in the sky. The moon, however, was nowhere to be seen. "Did you know, love, that it takes nearly a day for my body to fully process a meal?" she whispered. "We can play this game for as long as you wish ... oh, but if you lose, then you will vanish into the depths of my body, never to be seen again ... are you sure you don't want me to stop? It must be terribly hot and tight inside of my body, love. No? Very well ... but after tonight, if you've become part of me, it isn't my fault." He squirmed strongly and whatever she had planned to say next was lost in a explosion of pleasure that emanated through her body.
Her stomach began to work harder than ever, squeezing him even though the Placeholder spell prevented him from slipping any deeper into her body. And at any rate, he was far too large to fit into her intestines. They would not stretch like her stomach unless she cast the Impenetrable and Elastic spells, which she had no intention of doing until she won the game. After all, however unlikely, there was still a chance that he would ask to be let out before the moon touched her skin. From the light outside, she guessed that the full moon had already risen. She could cast an Unnatural Strength spell on herself and leave her tree to dance under the moonlight, but she discarded the idea. Let the moon come to her! She hadn't finished playing with her latest partner.
They continued to wrestle for two more hours during which her stomach filled to the brim with acid. He struggled valiantly, but he was simply no match for the primal force of her appetite and the wrestling went entirely her way. He could only squirm helplessly as her stomach gurgled and churned like a living engine. She referred to her activity as stomach wrestling; the other fairies had called it stomach rape. Holding a person helpless within her body as she bent him to her will certainly fit the description closely enough. She once again reminded him that he could leave her belly anytime he wished, but he enjoyed the euphoric pleasure of fighting against her muscles nearly as much as she. The Cultivate spell worked miracles.
White light curtained her doorway as the moon slowly, ever so slowly, journeyed across the nighttime sky. She waited in the pool for the light to approach; several hours yet would pass before the moon sank low enough to shine directly upon her body. Jeremy continued to resist and Jennifer giggled with pleasure as his body moved within hers. Waves of sensation lanced through her nerves and she thought that she would melt from euphoria. How could sexual intimacy compare with this? Stomach wrestling could be sustained for hours and even days if one wished and the pleasure that it produced compared to none other. She lay still in the water and watched her belly. If she looked carefully, she could see a slight bulge where he pressed himself against her impregnable stomach walls. A fortress, she'd earlier called her body, a fortress that nothing could breach. But neither could it be pierced from within and the fortress of her body could become a tomb in an instant.
Jennifer smiled again as Jeremy finally asked her to stop. Moonlight now fell at a sharper angle into her home, but it still had a long way to go. She recast the Tranquility spell and her stomach stopped churning; she felt him relax and she thought to herself how none of them ever realized that her body was a coffin. She was Death, she was the grave, her body the means by which men encountered Fate and discovered that they could never defeat her. He lay exhausted in her distended belly, quite unable to fight any longer without her powerful Invigorate spells to aid him. As for Jennifer, she had not yet begun to fight and it amused her to feel how weak the human truly was. "Rest, love. Rest well and recover your lost strength." She did not offer to recast the Invigorate spell. The full moon crept closer.
I hope to hear more from you in the future, because your mind is especially fascinating with your ideas. Mmmm.... how cruel, such a wonderful digestion. *hums softly picturing it*
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